How do you guys do so much damage? (O_O)
When looking at moves to fill your combo with, look at how much Drama they create, and how much damage they do overall. Also look at how much scaling is in effect when they're used, because some moves do a lot of damage when there's no scaling, but are a complete waste of Drama once scaling is in full effect. s.HP and cr.HP are great examples of this. They do anywhere around the full 900-950 at the start of a combo, but once you're at or near max scaling, they're doing less than 200 damage (over the alternative... BUER) for 30 Drama. Compare this to j.MP, which uses 20 Drama and does far more damage. A combo full of j.MPs is going to do more damage than a combo of s.HPs
You wouldn't want to use j.MP at the start of the combo, however, because it eats up 4 hits of scaling, and when building longer, better combos, you need to think about your
extensions. Painwheel can fly and do an attack to create an extension, while some characters can air dash, and some characters can launch. Due to it's startup, it's really hard to combo into j.MP repeatedly. Once you chain into it after Stage 2, generally, you're not going to land another one.
If you browse this thread, you'll see that a lot of the more damaging combos drop HPs entirely in favour of chains that consist solely of s.MK, cr.MP or a light attack into either of those. That's because, just like j.MP, those attacks are very efficient when you compare their Damage to Drama ratio.
Heavy attacks are not entirely useless, however. Damage scaling happens all the way up to Hit 16. After 16 hits, you're at maximum scaling. This means you want to fit the big beefy moves, as early on as possible, and preferably the Drama-heavy attacks in Stage 2 (Your first ground string). A s.HP is a single hit, which means it does almost nothing to scaling, and it will be free to use in your opening ground string. Many top damage combos use s.HP or cr.HP twice, earlier on in the combo, because these expensive attacks still play very nicely with damage scaling if you're before Hit 16. Also, current PW midscreen max-damage relies on an LK.Buer xx Fly > 3j.LP > s.HP link, because she lacks Drama/Damage efficient extensions without two-flight cancels after Buer (A recent change that shackled her damage back down to reasonable ranges).
Also, I should note that Buers, Throws and L.Stinger force you to Hit 8 for the purposes of damage scaling. This means using them early can ruin your combo.
It should be extra noted that Buer does SO MUCH DAMAGE that it wins out over any other move in PW's arsenal for the purposes of combo building. If you're past Hit 4 or so of scaling, BUER IS ALWAYS BETTER. There will never be a better move. It uses 20 Drama and does 385(IIRC) at max scaling. Compare this to s.HP's 100-ish for 30 Drama. The fact that you can fly out of it makes it extension friendly too. So much combos from it, which means you can do a lot to keep your combo IPS/Drama friendly. Buer even uses up 2 Hits for scaling, and it's still better. The damage is awesome.
Best moves at max scaling:
Buers
Fully Charged H or M Stinger (Requires assist extension)
j.MP,s.MK,cr.MP
f.HK
j.HP
j.HK
s.HK
